Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Triple Treasures Tuesday Night

Sometimes a simple Tuesday night out on New Yorks Lower East Side can be more packed than any tourist sightseeing tour. And way better, too. Come on, where can you pack an English New Wave legend, and Austrian-american Thereminstar and the hottest bands emerging in Britain in one short eve? Here the short version of last nights events:

After a horrid bus trip through the USA that left John with hundreds of impressions and inspirations but was also pretty exhausting, the charismatic singer was glad to have a stage under his feet, a guitar in his hand and a charming drummer in Heather Wagner, who had just the right amount of groove and feeling for Watts' songs. John and Heather played for about an hour, mostly the great stuff from his new Double CD "Real Life Is Good Enough", but he also mixed in a couple of older diamonds like "One Voice". Thanks to Detour for hosting another beautiful evening and thanx to all the friends who came out to see John Watts - it was well worth it, right?

We then went on further down to Pianos, where we witnessed another great show which left the crowd stunned by the austrian thereminister Dorit Chrysler. Most enjoyable in my opinion where the big rock pieces which harked back to Gary Numans Tubeaway Army. One sure way to stay of the "Jazz and Experimental"-Section in the trendy mags, D! In my book, you 're still punk rock, too.

John got us into hiphip Annex, where the beautiful nerdy crowd from the Brit Shoow at Bowery Ballroom afterpartied. There were so many, you had to bump into hundreds of british rock stars / after all, sxsw in Austin TX was just over and they all had a stopover in NYC. Problem with them Brits is, you can never tell if they are stars or just look the part. The Brakes really rocked, though and the boys in Young Knives looked like they guys who have to stay at Office Depot while everybody else is going for lunch - but their music was some of the best I heard in a long time, Wire crossed with the Jam and excellent vocals. Lesson No.1, then again: It's not the looks.